Prison Abolition

What is it?

Artwork by Smeet

Another exciting announcement! I’m working on a Prison Abolition game. I will be using this blog to write about some of the research I’m doing for this project including the ways that some states in the U.S. have already started the process of decarceration (if somewhat slowly). I’ll still use this Substack to write about other books I’m reading and other topics of interest, but will also include more resources/info about prisons and a few updates on the game. If you want more regular updates on the game’s progress, you can follow my developer accounts on itch (indie game website) or BlueSky.

The basic idea of the game is that you're elected governor of a fictitious state in the United States and must make a series of policy decisions to reduce the prison population to zero. You'll have to contend with changing public happiness and a rapidly approaching term-limit! The U.S. has long been in the top countries for highest incarceration rate, but as shown by many other countries, it doesn't have to be this way. Mass incarceration can actually have criminogenic effects, that is, people who are incarcerated for a specific act are more likely to commit crimes in the future as compared to people who receive needed services. 

I originally had the idea for this game when reading about how Hawaii almost completely ended youth incarceration through a concerted focus on rehabilitation and providing for youth needs. The goal is to incorporate as much factual evidence and research into the game as I can, to create a fun experience that challenges players to think about what a world without prisons would look like and what is needed to make it happen.

Reading Recommendations

1. Connecting the recent theme of immigration with prisons, ICE and border patrol are often discussed separately from prison reform, even though they now have detention centers, surveillance, and enforcement across the entire U.S. and receive more and more federal funds each year, as detailed in the new documentary Borderlands: The Line Within. Additionally, as the Washington Office on Latin America notes in a recent report

“Since March 2021 the state government of Texas, under Gov. Greg Abbott (R), has carried out “Operation Lone Star” (OLS), a crackdown on migration along the state’s border with Mexico. While this operation’s political, financial, and legal aspects have received much attention, an equally alarming issue has been relatively overlooked: the use of excessive force by Texas police and national guardsmen against civilians at the borderline.

They go on to detail the many examples of brutality, violence, and violent infrastructure installed using taxpayer dollars while noting at that “Despite these measures, OLS has not deterred migration to Texas, as compared to other border states.”

2. This article about Illinois’ lack of parole and how the punishment bureaucracy wastefully continues to punish people decades after they have worked to better themselves and proven that they deserve a second chance. Importantly, the piece provides the perspective of current inmates, which is something I will do my best to do going forward. Also, the quoted passage below is a great example of both the quotation above (using victims as pawns), and a bad faith argument similar to how some people argue endlessly about abolition. It’s easier to claim “the system just isn’t ready for parole” and shut down reforms than to actually make the investments required to improve people’s welfare. It doesn’t sound as bad as saying “I don’t really care about this and won’t do anything unless I’m forced to”, but has the same effect. As King famously said “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.” This article also parallels the book Correction, which I wrote about a while back.

State Sen. Seth Lewis (R-Carol Stream) isn’t opposed to the idea of bringing back parole, but questions whether it should be a priority for IDOC. “That whole system needs to be improved before we go wholeheartedly into a parole system,” Lewis said. “It has to come together, because giving someone the opportunity to leave prison and then not support them while they’re here — I think we’re setting them up for failure to go back.” He argued the whole system needs other cures for long-running ills — like addressing root causes of crime and providing rehabilitation for those incarcerated. “And we also have to bring in victims and victims’ families, making sure that they feel a part of the process or at least have a say,” Lewis said. “They may not like the outcome of a person who has been rehabilitated and not want to provide forgiveness. But at the same time, they need to be a part of it.”

3. This 2023 report from the Prison Policy Initiative details the dangers of complacency and non-reformist reforms. It goes into great detail about the massive amount of people under state surveillance through probation, parole, and other supervised release programs. These programs are often touted as a compromise solution where people will no longer be incarcerated, but will still be monitored. However, they often impose onerous restrictions on people and can lead to reincarceration for violations which are not considered crimes in any other context. This is an extension of mass incarceration, not a reduction of it. It leads to continued high levels of funding for surveillance and retribution and leaves less room in state and local budgets for services that create stronger communities and prevent crime. From the piece:

Nationwide, over 5.5 million adults — or 1 in 61 — are under some form of correctional control, whether incarcerated or under community supervision. To get a sense of how massive community supervision systems are, consider: If the population under probation and parole alone were its own state, it would be nearly the size of Oklahoma, and more populous than 22 other states, Puerto Rico, and D.C. And while the massive scale of probation (2.9 million) dwarfs the parole population (803,000), there are nearly as many people on parole as there are in federal prisons and local jails combined. Mass incarceration is in many ways fueled by these systems of mass supervision, even though they are typically billed as “alternatives.”

4. From August this news story covers a San Diego Mobile Crisis Response Team model which is able to respond to mental health crises. In a society where people do not care for each other law enforcement is the only option for most emergency responses, even in situations in which no law has been broken and no one is in danger but the person in crisis. San Diego shows there is a better way:

"It is best used as a prevention method," said County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer, highlighting the success of San Diego's mobile crisis response teams (MCRT) in terms of what it helps to avoid.

"It can actually lessen the chance that an individual ends up on our streets," Lawson-Remer added. 

These teams also help reduce the burden on local hospitals and emergency rooms, as well as on local law enforcement.

"Over 98% of calls have been diverted from armed law enforcement, resulting in a trained mcrt team arriving instead," Lawson-Remer said. 

That specialized team includes a mental health clinician, peer support specialist and a case manager.

Nearly 8,000 San Diegans in crisis have been assisted by these highly-trained teams, which can be dispatched to a home, business or street location.

What is Prison Abolition?

Before I get too far into this project, I want to clarify my perspective. The plan is to have the player experience the role of the decision-maker (mayor/governor) of a fictional state in the U.S. This is a very limited perspective and I chose it because of my limitations. I have not experienced incarceration and I am still learning about movements and mass-organizing to create change. I think it’s very important to highlight from the start that real change happens from the ground up, with mass movements, protests, and civil disobedience like the Civil Rights movement. And like the Civil Rights Movement, the many groups and individuals participating can have varying goals and varying methods to reach those goals as long as fundamentally they are trying to move society in the same direction. I think taking the perspective of a leader will be useful to show the player the impacts of policy changes in a concrete and simple way, rather than the messier way that organizing often occurs.

All that said, I aim to include as wide a range of perspectives on prisons and prison abolition as I can, keeping in mind that I’m just one person and there has probably been more written and said on the topic than I could ever hope to read. Before this really gets off the ground, I want to head off a debate I’ve seen play out over and over. Whenever someone mentions abolition, there is inevitably a person (or many people) who chime in with something along the lines of “I agree that prisons are bad, but abolition is just unreasonable. It would help your cause much more if you called it something else.” First off, I think debate about these topics is great! More discussion is good and I think more people should think through the implications of their position. I am not an expert, I am not the only voice, and I do not claim to speak for others, however, I would respond to the above critique in a few ways:

1. Prison reform and similar phrases are ambiguous, easily co-opted, and easily watered down. I keep coming back to this article about André Gorz’s idea of “non-reformist reforms”. For years people have been attempting prison reform and what often happens is similar to policing. Provide more funding for training, or more funding to build “state of the art” prisons, or more staff, or even ankle monitors and other forms of bringing prison home with you. All of these reforms that can be framed as a way to improve conditions for prisoners end up entrenching the system of mass incarceration. More funding means more power, means more peoples’ jobs rely on continued filling of prisons. Additionally, once the physical infrastructure is created, it will be used. In my view, an abolitionist framing must always look at intended reforms to see if they are “non-reformist” meaning they reduce the overall power that the institution has over our lives, culture, and society.

2. If, as many critics claim, they are in favor of reforming prisons, then a more productive path forward would be to work alongside abolitionists who are often the ones tirelessly pushing for the reforms they want. I have not heard of an abolitionist who thinks its feasible to demolish all prisons tomorrow and let everyone out. However, even a non-abolitionist should recognize that the U.S. is so far above any country (except possibly El Salvador now) in both the number and rate of incarceration that the quibbling over when we stop working toward abolition and start implementing more moderate reforms should likely take place 10-15 years from now.

3. I’m sure there are abolitionists who will disagree with me on this point and I’m still learning more myself, but my impression is that prisons in Finland for example are so completely different from U.S. prisons that using the same word to describe them is misleading at best, and flat-out incorrect at worst. In 10-20 years, when states and the federal government have actually implemented the reforms necessary to reduce incarceration and create a more supportive and less punitive society, I may come to agree with folks that a rehabilitative center is still necessary for certain folks who commit certain crimes. However, I don’t think that center would share much in common with what we currently call a prison in the U.S.

4. I think of abolition as a mindset and also as a very long-term goal. Without that ultimate goal in mind, it can be very difficult to set priorities and decide on a strategic plan. In fact, an abolition mindset requires massive change across many areas of society, which is why it can be hard for many people to understand it. We will likely need to reform education, healthcare, gun laws, and build more and better public institutions like libraries, job centers, and more to make this possible. Most objections to abolition should be taken seriously, as they are questions we will need to answer to create a better society. However, a lot of questions have been answered already by people much smarter than me! My goal is to provide citations that support the facts and impacts of the policy decisions in this game as much as possible to allow people to explore the aspects that interest them. I don’t see it as worth my time to endlessly debate folks online about the name or framing of abolition. If someone is seeking information and wishes to change their mind, I hope they do. If they seek to distract and waste time proving some pedantic point, I hope they get out and start to do some work to make change and see how messy it actually is.

Purchase the Book

If you’d like, you can purchase some of the books mentioned in this post from bookshop.org. This is a way to support local bookstores (or me if you use the link below), and avoid the Amazon monopoly.

Here is the link to my store page, with all of my recommendations.

You can also use the store locator and select a local book shop for the profit of your purchase to go to. According to the website:

When you select your local bookstore on the map above and visit their Bookshop.org page, we place a cookie in your browser that identifies you as that store's customer, and the store will get the full profit from all your Bookshop.org purchases (30% of the book's list price).